


Passing

by lonelywalker



Category: X-Men (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-16
Updated: 2011-04-16
Packaged: 2017-10-18 04:12:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the Mutant Registration Act turns friends into enemies and enemies into friends, Hank desperately tries to retain some sense of normality – or what passes for normal, at any rate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passing

"I would have thought they'd come up with a better name," Hank says, adjusting his glasses in the fogged-up bathroom mirror, and swiping a stray black hair from his forehead. "The Mutant Freedom Act, perhaps. Registration makes us sound like dogs - _oh, have you registered your new mutant yet? Isn't he cute!_ "

There is a wad of blue fur in the shower drain, and both of them have been avoiding it for weeks.

"Clearly the name should be what disturbs you most." Raven's voice is a low growl at this time of the morning, absent coffee and much sleep, but her movements are graceful as she dodges puddles on the floor and takes a perfectly fluffy white robe from the back of the door. If Hank can do one thing right, it's laundry.

Hank is busy drawing a smiley face in the condensation. With pointy ears. And fangs. "Often the best course of action in these situations is ridicule. Treating Kelly's fears seriously would be a disaster. The Act is unconstitutional and unnecessary, and belongs in the same category as worrying about alien abductions and building highways for wolves." (He's been watching _The West Wing_ again.)

The sheets always seem to have a blue tint to them, on the mornings when he wakes to the sound of Raven in the shower. It's an illusion (perhaps), but he enjoys the idea of it, the way his world might change, just a fraction, because she's in it.

He's alone among the residents of his building in not employing a cleaner. It's the thing to do in this apartment block of Washington politicians and lawyers and aides, all far too busy to cast a thought in the direction of dishes and dirty floors and clogged-up drains. But he's cultivated enough of an absent-minded professor persona – and enough of a presence as a talking head on national news networks – that no one finds it too odd that he might have secrets to keep.

Still, those secrets are probably never conceived of as being quite as big, and blue, and furry.

"Jean Grey will be lecturing Congress next week," Raven says, in the same tone she had used the previous month to tell him that she was learning to fly helicopters. He's never sure whether he should roll his eyes or call the FBI. "If you were talking I might actually listen."

Ah, Jean. Bitingly intelligent and only abnormal in appearance in that she might be better suited to strutting catwalks than explaining basic science to acne-faced adolescents. "Charles is clearly betting that Kelly is the only member of the Republican Party _not_ secretly getting his kicks from boys in bathrooms," Hank replies. It's an easier admission than the truth. "Will you be there? I might stop by…"

"One way or another." Raven splish-splashes back into the bedroom. She's here regularly enough, but there are none of the markers of a traditional girlfriend – no drawer commandeered for her clothes. If she brushes her teeth, she never does it here.

"Watching Erik's back?"

"Erik doesn't _need_ me to watch his back," she points out, and drops the robe on the bed, morphing as he watches her. Despite infinite possibilities, he knows she has her preferences – an ice maiden, long blonde hair tightly bound; a wiry young man with too-blue eyes… But perhaps these are only the facets she permits him to see.

For his part, he takes solace in the fact that he only ever masquerades as himself, albeit a version of himself who hasn't truly been seen in more than five years. Despite everything that has happened, Erik Lehnsherr is still watching _his_ back.

"Kelly's not an idiot," he tells her, sounding too much like a father figure, like _Charles_ , for his liking. "I've talked to him, and he can sound quite rational. He knows what scares people, and he knows how to argue. He used to be a lawyer – a good one."

Raven, fiddling with her hair, is only half-listening. "We're not going to _argue_ with him, Henry." Her voice is clearer now, a note or two higher. Behind the façade, though, he knows she still wants her espresso.

"Well," Hank says, feeling that this isn't quite the victory he would like. "Good."

She tastes like cherry lip gloss he knows isn't there when she kisses him. He suspects he still tastes of wet fur and coconut-scented shampoo.

***

"You could really go places if you branch out from this mutant issue," Henry Gyrich says, barely looking up from his PDA as they do what passes for brunch in a Washington café. Hank is more than a little worried about the flimsy wicker chair collapsing under his weight as he sips orange juice and nibbles on a croissant. "Sure, it's going to get Robert the presidency pretty soon, but when it does, and when this bill passes, it'll be old news. What's your opinion on the economy, McCoy? That's what people are worried about in the long-term. Jobs and gas and burgers and their goddamn iPods."

Hank scratches his nose. "That really isn't my field."

"Field?" Gyrich looks up with such puzzlement Hank has to wonder if his image projector hadn't suddenly malfunctioned. "This isn't academia. All you have to do is talk a good game. Have ideas. Be passionate! Next year you could be in the cabinet if you play your cards right… You're not _really_ invested in all of this mutant bullshit, are you?"

"Only to the extent that it's my life's work," Hank says brightly.

Gyrich is already nodding. "Exactly! It's a fleeting thing. Carnival freaks. We'll pass some laws and they'll all calm down and blend in and get McJobs like every other decent American…"

The light electronic buzz in the air makes Hank turn just as Charles Xavier, sitting in his third-favorite wheelchair, with Jean Grey by his side, glides past a few feet away. Hank shoves a handful of dollars on the table, grabs his jacket from the back of his chair, and leaves Gyrich to his email.

"Hello Henry," Charles says without even a glance over his shoulder. Jean, startled, turns around as Hank's footsteps thud against the sidewalk.

"Hello," Hank manages, knocked off balance conversationally before he's said a word. Charles never does make things easy. "You're in town for the hearing? I'm sure it'll be wonderful."

Jean smiles, as shy in front of him as she had been at sixteen while he dashed around madly in a lab coat. "Doug and Kitty helped me work on the graphics, but it's the facts that should really make an impact."

"I bet Senator Kelly will be leaving an apple on your desk once you're done," Hank says graciously. "How's Scott? We should have dinner sometime."

"Well," Jean says, glancing down at Charles. "We have a very busy schedule. Actually, Scott's…"

"Looking after the children," Charles interrupts. With that smooth English accent, it almost doesn't seem rude. "You look well, Henry."

Hank pats down his tie, and wonders if his image projector can blush. "Thank you. You, uh, you do too. Both of you. And if there's anything I can do…"

They promise to call him, to make dinner arrangements and share gossip about the school, and not mention that beaten-up leather uniform he knows must still hang in a basement somewhere, waiting for the Beast to return. He knows they won't, for much the same reason he hasn't been back to Westchester in years.

"It's not the same," he finds himself telling Ororo on the phone. She's somewhere, doing something she can't talk about, but which seems to involve berating Scott for a lack of any sense of direction in snowstorms. "You know everything changed. It became too much…"

"It changed for the better," she says softly. He remembers when she was a tiny little African weather goddess, following him around the lab and giggling as he pulled funny faces, and now both the accent and the laughter are only distant memories. "There was so much tension then. The arguments were scaring the children. And the accident…"

"Was an accident." For all he's determined not to take sides, he suspects that saying anything else would be far worse. "There was a balance before."

"Magneto was never balanced," Ororo tells him, as static briefly interrupts the call.

" _Magneto_? We're calling him Magneto now?" Henry is midway across the room before he realizes he's pacing. "Do you remember when he was Dr. Lehnsherr? Do you remember when he was _Erik_?"

But Ororo had been younger, had flinched at arguments rather than reveling in the discussion, had been sent to bed while Henry stayed up with the teachers and called them by their first names and learned to like expensive brandy and play a particularly devious game of chess.

When Erik had left, to take up an apartment in New York lined with books, and be tended by his lover – a young man with too-blue eyes in whom Hank, too, had come to take an interest, Ororo had only reveled in the sudden peace and stability. Hank had mourned the loss of a parent and a friend, and soon discovered that attempting to bridge the gap, to make them share custody of their academy's first son, was near impossible. He'd gone to Washington to do research and immerse himself in a more practical world of politics than that taking place in Charles Xavier's sitting room. And if Raven, that other lost child of those years, had sought refuge with him too, then so much the better.

He sees Erik in a Washington hotel room the day before Kelly goes missing on a routine helicopter trip, the day before he knows Raven has chosen a side, and, by default, so has he.

Erik has always been old. Though he had been a boy on the cusp of adolescence once, that innocent youth had been cruelly interrupted by the Holocaust, and Hank has wondered on occasion if Erik's hair wasn't always grey, his eyes so effortlessly piercing, his face so scarred and lined with more experience than age. He wears beautiful clothes, perfectly tailored suits, but bears them all as a mere necessity: the ultimate practical man.

Hank's image projector flickers off the moment the door closes behind him. He does very well not to trip over his own feet.

"Tea?" So many of Erik's habits are directly copied from Charles – that quasi-British cadence, the clothes, the tea and quaint ideas about politeness and hospitality – but they never, ever fit perfectly.

So many bad dreams are encapsulated in this moment: suddenly appearing "naked" in front of a teacher. But Hank plods over to the free chair, and gingerly sits down, happy that he had, in fact, been wearing clothes under the holographic projection. "I would, but I fear for your china."

"Mm." A wide, metal cup appears instead. Hank wouldn't like to bet whether or not it had been there a moment ago. "You should let me look at that projector. Hardly my best work. Then again, Charles is still using the trash I built years before that."

Erik fishes for compliments in the most obtuse way. "Trash that's years in advance of most US technology," Hank points out, pouring himself tea, and reaching for the milk. He's never been able to take it with only lemon.

"US technology…" Erik seems to savor the words. "If only the people were half as advanced. They still lynch the blacks, you know, and that should be a hundred and fifty years out of date. Still hate the Jews. Still fear the queers. But finally they've chosen a people who can fight back, Henry, and not only with words and demonstrations and oh-so-friendly petitions."

Raven tells him that, when they go out as a gay couple in New York, holding hands just for the hell of it, people even call them cute. But Hank thinks of just how cute his co-workers might find a large blue-furred animal with claws, and just how quickly they'd drag their children away and pull out tranquilizer guns. He shuts his mouth.

"Have you seen Charles' response to this? Finally mutants are in the public eye – of course in a thoroughly negative sense, but that is only to be expected – and he has decided to win over the bigots and hatemongering humans with the argument that we are all so flawlessly _normal_. I certainly wasn't shocked that he chose Jean to make the presentation."

Hank clears his throat. "She's perfectly qualified."

"Charles, of course, is too much the outsider. Ororo too exotic. Scott sadly plagued with those curious glasses. And you…" Erik looks at him over the edge of his teacup.

"Charles doesn't trust me," Hank says. He knows that Erik knows. "He hasn't, since you left. He doesn't know whose side I'm on."

Erik's smile is such that Hank would love to be in on the joke. "For a psychic, the man is extraordinarily paranoid."

"You haven't asked me to speak for you," Hank points out, although he has a good idea that his oratory skills are hardly the ones in question.

"No." More tea is poured. "Nor would I. You're far more valuable than a pawn in either of our arguments at this stage, Henry. But I am very sure that you will eventually come around. Perhaps the others believe they can fade into the background of an ordinary, everyday American existence. But we know better, don't we? We're extraordinary, and always have been, and we can never let anyone take that away from us."

Afterwards, Hank stands in the corridor outside for a full minute, blue and furry to the naked eye, his toes curling with the tension.

And then, finally, the image projector flickers back on.

***

Two days after the incident at the Statue of Liberty, Hank comes home to find Raven – blue, scaly, beautiful Raven – wrapped in blankets in his bed, sound asleep. When they make love, gingerly, tenderly, his fingers brush golden scars in her abdomen and he hopes she's not thinking solely of Erik when she comes.

The newspapers are filled with the mutant "problem" – Kelly's bill withdrawn, and five more preparing to take its place, rumors about a secret mutant police force, more rumors about the infamous terrorist Magneto locked away in a plastic prison. Hank asks a million questions in Washington corridors and finds himself thrust onto television rather than given answers.

A week later, he walks through the gates of the Xavier Academy as himself, grinning at the wide eyes of children, saying hello to those he remembers, patting the smaller ones who creep up to touch his fur. He has pockets full of Twinkies, and is eager to share.

"We don't want you back, Henry," Charles says in his beautiful oak-lined office, where there's no hint of what lies beneath. "You're too valuable to be misused on paramilitary operations. You have an enviable profile in Washington. Don't waste that. There will be others past Kelly, and we'll need to combat them in the halls of power, not with alpha beams and telepathy."

"And adamantium claws, I hear." Bobby Drake and his new girlfriend have been _most_ informative. Hank pats the arm of his chair. "I can't commit myself to your side in this, Charles. Erik has done… unforgivable things, but…"

"I understand," Charles says, "More than you can imagine." And for once Hank is glad to not have to explain any of it: the scales in his shower, the confusion in his past, the parents he just can't give up.

He stays for an afternoon, helping out Ororo with a political science class, playing foosball with a surly teenager who has a fondness for Zippo lighters, and, when no one is paying too much attention, tracking down that battered old uniform deep in the basement.

"Do you think it still fits?" Raven asks him, later, lazily twined up with him in the hours past midnight, when white and black and blue alike are obscured by shadows and lost in darkness.

He rather hopes he never has to find out.


End file.
